Getting Things Done

Preview

Most people do not need more hours in the day. They need more room in their mind. That is the heart of Getting Things Done. David Allen begins with a simple but life changing observation. Your mind is a terrible office. It is good for having ideas, sensing change, noticing problems, and creating options. It is not good for holding reminders, replaying unfinished business, or trying to track every promise you made to yourself and others. When you use your head as a storage bin, you feel pressure, guilt, distraction, and fatigue. You keep thinking about what you are not doing, instead of fully doing what is in front of you. The book offers a complete method for reaching what it calls a state of relaxed control. That phrase matters. The goal is not to become a machine. It is not to squeeze every minute until life turns hard and joyless. The goal is to be fully present, fully engaged, and able to make good choices with a clear mind. Allen wants you to experience what he calls a "mind like water." Drop a pebble into still water and it responds appropriately, then returns to calm. It does not overreact. It does not underreact. It responds exactly as needed. That, he says, is what your mind can do when it is not clogged with open loops. An open loop is anything pulling at your attention. It might be a project at work, a bill on the kitchen counter, a conversation you need to have, an idea for a vacation, a broken drawer, a meeting to schedule, or a dream you want to explore someday. Big or small, each unresolved commitment asks for psychic energy. The more of them you carry internally, the more scattered you feel. So the book is...